This Broken World We Choose
by Kilerkki
Summary: A chuunin kunoichi meets tall, dark, and dangerous in a Konoha bar. Shinobi are weapons, but sometimes weapons remember their humanity. Original characters, pre-canon. Ongoing.
1. Chapter 1

This Broken World We Choose

_For Dark, who both asked and inspired._

Note: This fic is set about 30 years before the beginning of _Naruto _canon, about 6 years before the outbreak of the Third Great Ninja War. All characters are original, but the setting is derived directly from the Fallen Leaves RPG on Insanejournal.

* * *

He's leaning on the bar nursing a bottle of beer when Miyako comes up to order another round, and since the bartender's busy getting his flirt on with a redhead at the far end Miyako takes her time appreciating the man at her elbow. Tall, the way she likes 'em, with scarred hands and black hair and no obvious insignia of clan or rank. When he tips his head back to drink the sweeping line of his throat and jaw is like calligraphy.

"Drinking alone?" she asks.

He glances down at her, and if he's drunk enough to be startled it's only a flicker behind dark eyes. "I was."

There's a bandage nearly hidden beneath the short sleeve of his black tee-shirt, a scabbing scrape along his high, chiseled cheekbone. Miyako's a chuunin of Konoha; she knows well enough not to ask if it's the mission that has him drinking here alone, or where his teammates are. Her own teammates from her latest mission are waiting in a booth at the back, but they can wait a bit longer. She rests her elbows on the bar and tosses her long hair back, inviting his gaze to linger. "If the bartender ever bothers to do his job, let me buy you one."

"Do I look like I need it?" There's a momentary tension in his mouth—professional paranoia, she thinks. _Jounin._

That would be enough of a turn-off for most girls she knows, genin and chuunin alike. (Civilians are too silly to know better. Miyako and the other kunoichi watch out for the civilian girls when they can, warn them off the dangerous ones, and shrug and go back to their beers when the little fools brush their warnings off.)

But Tousaki Miyako has never been most girls. She catches the barkeep's eye at last, draws him in with a wink and a nod, and smiles back up at tall, dark, and paranoid.

"Don't know you well enough to know what you need. But I just got back from a B-rank with the documents and without a scratch, and I'm celebrating. Told myself I'd buy a drink for the first pretty boy I saw, and you fit the bill."

His eyes widen. "_Pretty_?" And, after a stunned moment, "_Boy_?"

"You're adorable," Miyako tells him fondly. She glances over her shoulder at the barkeep. "Three beers for me, and for my friend here..."

"Nothing," he says firmly.

"One of those fruity little pink things with an umbrella on a stick," Miyako says, and grins at him as she collects the tall frosted bottles from the bartender. "Hit me up later if you want a round with a little more testosterone."

She puts an extra sway into her hips as she walks back to the corner booth. She's still grinning when she drops the bottles in front of Tetsuo and Hiroshi, and she takes a long swig from her own before glancing over her shoulder.

There's a fruity pink drink in a fancy glass on a napkin resting just short of the tall jounin's knuckles. He's staring down at it as if he expects the henge to drop at any moment and reveal an explosion tag. The bartender drifts away again to flirt with his redhead. Hiroshi begins a whispered countdown. Miyako reaches out, without looking, and thwaps him on the forehead.

The jounin looks over. Tetsuo swears and begins trying to sink beneath the table, to either die of second-hand embarrassment or take shelter from the inevitable chakra-edged brawl. Miyako, caught staring, smiles.

She can almost hear the snort. But he picks the drink up, drops the umbrella on the napkin, and tosses it back in one smooth swallow. She watches his throat work, strong and brown, and when he sets the glass down again and meets her gaze with a challenge in his eyes, she abandons her boys without a backward glance.

Yesterday she killed two men. Tonight, she thinks, she'll make up for it.

* * *

His name's Ryuu. He doesn't give his family name; she doesn't volunteer her own. They're not exactly standing on formalities, pressed against the brick in the back alley behind the bar, with his hands sliding up under her shirt and her mouth hungry on his throat. He's tall enough that she has to stand on her toes to reach his mouth; he tastes of vodka and strawberries, and his hands are like fire on her skin.

Once, with her shirt half-off and her skirt pushed up to her hips, he hesitates. "I don't have a condom on me."

"I'm on protection," she tells him. If he were a civilian she'd worry about disease, but an STD check is a routine part of every ninja's hospital treatment, and at his level—even at hers—they're visiting the hospital once a month. Konoha knows its ninja. She arches up beneath his hands and laces her fingers through his thick black hair, pulling his head down to hers, nipping at his lower lip. "You don't have to be gentle."

He isn't. He takes her there against the wall, hard and fast and brutal, and she bites his shoulder to muffle her cries. It's like riding a tiger, all lean muscle and explosive power, the thrill of danger and the sharp edge of pleasure-nearly-pain. He takes her to the brink and throws them both over, and in the shuddering aftermath she closes her eyes and rests her head against the crumbling brick and feels, for the first time in weeks, finally at peace.

It can't last. He shifts, and she sighs and opens her eyes and unwinds her legs from around his hips. He relaxes his grip on her thighs, lets her down, takes a moment to adjust himself and zip his jeans up again. She re-fastens her bra, pulls skirt and shirt down, and rakes her fingers through her hair.

"Thanks," she says.

"Any time."

She's already stooping among the discarded bottles and broken crates to feel around for her panties, and for a bare moment she's startled enough to stop, crouching there, and look up at him. He has his hands in his pockets, but he's looking down at her, not away.

Her fingers close on elastic and lace. She stands, stuffing the crumpled ball into her pocket, and smiles. "If you mean that," she says, "I might just take you up on it, next time I'm home."

"Next time," he says, "buy me a better drink."

* * *

Tetsuo and Hiroshi are already gone by the time she re-enters the bar. They left the tab for her to settle. She pays it and, after a moment's thought, adds a bottle of cheap shouchuu to the bill.

The night air has finally begun to cool. She walks slowly, swinging the bottle by its neck, and tilts her head back to watch the stars. There aren't nearly so many here in the heart of Konoha, with all its lights spilling up into the sky; only the brightest are visible. The rest still shine, out in the darkness of the forest and fields where ninja bleed and die, but they're too weak to be seen here, and children never learn their names.

The stairs of her apartment building are old and crumbling. Normally she'd take them two at a time anyway, but she's tired and a little sore, and there's no reason to hurry. Their mission report is already on file. She'll take a day off, maybe two, and then sign up for another. Snow Country should be nice, this time of year.

Maybe she'll look for Ryuu again when she comes back.

She's still thinking of the muscles in his arms, the way he held her without apparent effort, when she sees the light in the window. Every muscle knots. She reshapes her grip on the bottle and takes the last flight of stairs silently. The door-knob moves beneath her hand, unlocked.

She could grieve for the loss of that easy lassitude, the mindless peace. But she opens the door anyway and steps inside, and when the man seated on the threadbare sofa glances away from the flickering television she meets his smile with a cold stare.

Her father is still a handsome man. Tall, dark-haired, with only streaks of grey at his temples, his lean frame barely beginning to thicken with age and alcohol. He wears faded chuunin blues; hitai'ate and flak vest are already tossed carelessly on the floor, along with a handful of crumpled cans. She recognizes the six-pack she left in her fridge.

If she were clever she'd have dropped the bottle of shouchuu off the stairs outside, but it's too late now. He's seen it already, and his smile widens. "Welcome-home present, Miya-chan? Sweet of you."

"Get out," she says, low, so angry that she can feel it vibrating in her belly. "What the hell do you think you're doing here? I told you—"

"I need a place to stay for a few days," he interrupts.

"Saya finally got smart and kicked you out?" Miyako shakes her head. "I don't care. Go take a mission. Don't come back. Don't _ever _come here."

He stands, and despite herself she takes one step back. She recovers, steps forward again, but the damage has been done. He's still smiling, lazy, easy, so godsdamned _sure _of himself, and she thinks she might be sick. Isn't this always the way it goes? She's angry enough to kill, and he thinks it's all a game he's already won.

Hell, maybe he did. Maybe he won it fifteen years ago, and she's only kept fighting because she's too damned stubborn to know when she's beaten.

Stubborn's all that will help her now. She points to the open door. "Get out."

He steps closer. The smile has begun to fade, as if he can't quite believe what he's hearing. "I'm tryin' to be patient, Miyako," he says. "But I got my limits."

"I hit mine a long time ago." She's holding herself so rigid that she's almost trembling. Raw chakra sparks over her fingertips. "Believe me now: I'll kill you if you touch me. _Get out._"

For a long moment he stares at her, dark eyes narrowed, mouth twisted in sudden fury. She lifts her chin and stares him down, letting him see the promise in her eyes. She'll do it. This time, she tells herself, _she'll do it._

And then he moves, so sharply that she flinches before she can catch herself—but he's stepping back to scoop up his vest and hitai'ate, then moving past her, through the door, out to the landing. He stops there and turns, and he's already recovered the old easy charm. "Get some sleep, Miya-chan. You always lose your temper too easy when you're tired. I'll see you another time."

She slams the door. Locks it, dead-bolts it, keys the seals she seldom ever uses because they're such a pain to replace and recharge. She's breathing hard and fast, and her chakra surges through her pathways as if searching for release. She thinks of fire jutsu, of skin crackling, fat sizzling, of smoke thick and greasy and soul-satisfying, and she's not sure whether to laugh or cry.

In the end she drinks a quarter of the bottle of shouchu, and then she brushes her teeth and ties her hair up and changes into her chuunin blues.

The mission desk is open twenty-four hours a day. They don't ask questions.

* * *

They leave in the grey light of dawn, three chuunin and a jounin captain, all of them yawning and cranky in the sunless chill. Miyako doesn't know where they're going and doesn't care. The jounin has their orders; he'll give her hers. She nurses her hangover and speaks only when spoken to, and the sun has already risen above the trees before she realizes that their jounin captain is Ryuu.

If he recognizes her, he doesn't betray it. They break for lunch at noon, at a little roadside stand a few miles out of Kawaguchi; he buys rice balls and pickled radish and shares them out with scrupulous fairness. Two each, and anything else comes out of their own pocket. Daisuke, the medic, buys yakitori on a skewer and offers some to Miyako. The smell is nauseating. She smiles at him anyway.

Ryuu doesn't sit at the shaded benches outside the stall with the rest of them. He takes his rice balls and wanders off into the trees beside the road, where the shadows lie so thickly that his blues are near-invisible four steps in. Miyako can spot him only by the red swirl patches on his shoulders, bright as blood.

"Got your eye on the taichou?" Keiichi is a little weasel of a genjutsu user, sharp-featured and pale-eyed. She's worked with him before and likes him less each time.

"Maybe," she says, without bothering to look at him. "Is that any business of yours?"

"He's bad news," Keiichi says.

Miyako swings her leg over the bench and stands, brushing her hands off against her thighs. "So am I."

She heads into the trees. It's cooler here, and the shadows are gentle to her sun-pained eyes. Her headache begins to fade at last. She even dares to contemplate a nap; they won't move out for another fifteen minutes at least, and she slept worse than poorly last night. Not much grass here, but she's slept curled between roots before.

Then she rounds the massive trunk of another tree, and Ryuu is watching her.

He looks different in blues and flak vest and hitai'ate, with a katana strapped to his back and a kunai holster on his thigh. Older, more solid somehow. Maybe it's the weight of authority on his shoulders, or the sun-dappled shadows on his face. That scabbing scrape is still livid along his cheekbone, though, and she wonders if he's still wearing a bandage beneath his sleeve.

"Quick turn-around," she says.

"I don't spend much time at home." The shadows make it hard to read his eyes. He's leaning back against a gnarled trunk, shoulders braced, one sandaled foot propped up against the bark, his hands easy in his pockets.

Her body still remembers the heat of his skin.

She draws a little closer, stops, finds her own tree to lean against. "I can understand that."

He frowns, and for a moment she wonders what she's doing. You don't get involved with your teammates on missions; that's a cardinal rule of the shinobi corps. You may be married ten years with three brats at home, but on a mission you're comrades, not lovers. She's served before with men she's slept with, and neither of them have said a word.

Maybe it's the darkness in his eyes.

"I didn't know you were on this team," she says. "I signed up for the first short-notice mission I could get."

He murmurs, "Quick turn-around."

"Well," she says, deliberately light, "I told myself I had to take another mission before I went looking for you again."

That startles him at last. She smiles and shoves away from her tree. "Start thinking about that drink."

She heads back to the tables by the road, where Daisuke and Keiichi are playing a desultory game of Five-Finger Fillet. She joins them, wins easily, mocks Keiichi for using a dull kunai; her own is as sharp as a whisper, but she never draws blood.

She can feel the moment Ryuu comes out of the trees to watch, but she doesn't look up.

They move on again. That night they camp in a sheltered clearing beside a stream, and she lies awake in her bedroll beside the banked fire, listening to water run over stones. It's her second night without sleep and she's desperately tired, but every time she closes her eyes she shudders herself awake again. In the morning she asks Daisuke for a soldier pill. His eyes cloud with worry. "Already?"

"I had a root in my back all night," she says. "I couldn't sleep."

He still looks worried, but he opens the sealed box in his med-kit and doles out one of the precious little pills. The Akimichi researchers are still perfecting the formula; this is one of the newest formulations, dark green and slightly moist to the touch. It begins to dissolve on her tongue with a taste like old coffee and mold. She swallows it and thanks Daisuke and goes to the stream to rinse out her mouth.

Ryuu is shaving, narrow-eyed, intent on the little sliver of mirror he's propped up on a willow root. She crouches upstream from him, cups her hand in the morning-chill water, and nearly overbalances when he speaks.

"We'll be in Junpei tonight. I'll get us rooms at an inn there."

He must have heard her conversation with Daisuke. She stares, dry-eyed, into the stream, watching her reflection hurry past.

"Thank you," she says. "I'll look forward to it."

* * *

Outside the city gates that evening they each cast a henge, concealing uniforms and flak vests beneath a thin veneer of civilian respectability. Keiichi's weasel face turns square-jawed and handsome. Daisuke's round cheeks thin a little.

Miyako doesn't change her face or figure, but she imagines her long dark hair done up in a respectable married woman's bun, held in place by carved tortoiseshell kanzashi. Her kimono is pale green with little sprays of white plum blossoms, and her wide obi is red as heart's blood. She folds her hands demurely and smiles beneath lowered lashes.

Keiichi whistles softly, falls silent when Ryuu's eyes cut to him. Miyako's smile widens.

Ryuu is still tall, still black-haired, but he wears a samurai retainer's dark blue kimono with two swords thrust through his narrow black obi. The other two are in townsmen's short pants and happi coats, unremarkable on these crowded streets; she wonders if they're regretting their selections now. Keiichi's fingers flex around the shape of another hand-seal.

"Don't bother," Ryuu says. He pulls out his wallet with their mission funds, counts out a handful of ryo for each man. "We'll be less obvious if we split up. Make a left turn and two rights and then take rooms at the third tea-house you see. Have dinner and get some rest. We'll meet behind the inn at moon-set."

Keiichi looks as if he wants to argue, but he meets Ryuu's eyes and turns away. Both of them fade into the stream of humanity passing through the gates. Ryuu waits ten minutes, then follows, with Miyako silent at his heels.

He takes the best room at the tea-house, orders a meal and hot water for baths. The women's bath house is behind the main wing, connected by an open-air passage overlooking a garden. Miyako passes Daisuke on the way and doesn't acknowledge him with even a glance.

When she comes back, with her wet hair loose down her back and the inn's cotton yukata cool on her damp skin, food is waiting on little laquered tables in the center of the room. A single double-wide futon has already been laid out beneath the window. Ryuu is sitting in the wide window-sill, smoking a slender, inlaid pipe and watching the world fade into darkness. His skin is clean and brown, hair drying ruffled, blacker than night. The inn's striped yukata gapes open over his chest and bares one dangling leg.

Miyako kneels, graceful as a geisha, in front of one of the little tables. "Will you eat, my lord?"

He stirs, comes back to himself, looks down at her. A corner of his mouth quirks. "I will."

He taps the ashes out into a little pewter bowl, tucks the pipe into his sleeve, and comes to kneel across from her. Both of them are wire-nerved, dangerously aware of their own uniforms in packs leaning disguised against the wall, of their comrades somewhere in this inn's maze of rooms, of the mission looming before them in the darkness. Maybe that's what lends a delicious edge to their play-acting. They eat, exchange polite conversation: a reserved samurai and his new, nervous bride, slowly feeling their way towards a deeper knowledge of each other...

Miyako sets the tables out in the hall when they finish. She closes the sliding door and turns back into the lamp-lit room. There are four, possibly five hours till moon-set; time enough to sleep, if she could ever relax enough to close her eyes. She's never acquired the old soldier's gift of sleeping anywhere at an instant's notice, and she wonders if Ryuu has either.

She meets his eyes. "Will you take your rest, my lord?"

His gaze drops, touches the single futon. Lifts to her again, for a long, thoughtful moment. Then his mouth tightens, and he shakes his head. His voice is still the smooth, cultured tones of the samurai. "I may smoke a little longer. You should retire first. You were weary today." He retreats to the window, pulling his pipe from his sleeve.

For a moment she can see him there, smoking the moon away, stiffening in a window-sill so that she can sleep. The futon is wide enough that they could share without touching, only a little closer than when they slept around the fire last night. Is it propriety that keeps him there? He must know she has no reputation to protect.

She thinks, fleetingly, of Shinobi Rule Sixteen, of shinobi turned sexless: not men and women together on a team but weapons in a common sheath. Did those long-dead rulemakers truly believe that donning a hitai'ate meant shedding your humanity? Or were they just as human, just as fallible, just as weak to lust and loneliness?

There are four lamps burning behind their paper shades around the corners of the room. She blows out three, leaves the last glowing softly by the door while she folds down the coverlet. Silhouetted against the open window, Ryuu turns his head away to grant her a moment of privacy.

This is far harder than buying a handsome man a drink in a bar.

At the first brush of her fingers across the back of his neck he tenses, rigid as iron, but he doesn't turn. She holds her breath and eases the yukata from his shoulders. His skin is warm, and her hands are so cold. She trails her palm down the broad smooth muscles of his back and feels him shiver at her touch.

"My lord," she whispers, taking refuge in their disguise, "will you not take your rest with me?"

A muscle leaps in the side of his jaw. Smoke coils from the tiny bowl of the pipe, wreathes his head, dissolves into the wind. He takes the pipe from his mouth and stares out at the white waxing moon. She can barely hear his words.

"I am not weary, my wife. There would be little rest."

"My lord," she murmurs, "that is all I desire."

He turns to look at her. His eyes are wide and black, and she could fall into them and never find herself again. His mouth shapes a word but does not release it. Slowly, carefully, he sets the pipe down on the window-sill. He reaches for her with the same gentle hands, unties the belt of her yukata, peels the robe back from her shoulders. She is naked beneath it, and she hears his breath catch.

She takes his hand and draws him down to the futon, and he goes with her willingly.

* * *

He wakes her later with a hand on her shoulder. She comes alert instantly. The lamp near the door has gone out, and the moon is dying. Ryuu is a black shape in the darkness, but his scent and his warmth are already familiar.

She dresses in silence. Underwear and sports bra, long-sleeved blue shirt with Konoha's crimson swirls embroidered on each shoulder, dark blue trousers bound with white bandages at shin and thigh. She attaches her kunai holster to her thigh and her shuriken pouch to her belt, zips up her flak vest, ties up her hair.

Ryuu's waiting crouched in the window. He's already re-arranged the futon, mounding the coverlet skillfully over the shape of sleeping bodies. There's nothing left to do but follow him into the night.

They meet Daisuke and Keiichi, both in uniform and wearing their familiar faces, behind the women's bathhouse. A brief exchange of nods and they're moving again, taking to the roofs for their swift silent passage over a sleeping city. Junpei Castle is a many-tiered blackness against the starlit sky.

Daisuke stuns one guard in the gardens. Miyako kills another: quick, nearly painless, a razor-edged kunai across the throat. He bleeds out in seconds. Daisuke looks reproachful, Keiichi excited. Ryuu's face gives away nothing at all.

They scale the wall of the central keep, kill another guard, and slip through dark hallways. Ryuu guides them by hand signals to the lord of the castle's study. Here Keiichi is in his element, rifling through books, checking scrolls, picking the locks on the solid desk drawers. Ryuu stations Daisuke at the door and beckons to Miyako to follow him.

She knows a little more of what they're doing, by now. Keiichi has been sent to steal certain documents and replace them with others, forged by experts in Konoha. She and Ryuu have been sent to kill.

She doesn't know _why _their client wants the oldest daughter of the lord of Junpei Castle dead, and she doesn't want to know. It's easy to kill when your victim is an object in your way, a messy thing of blood and bone without family or personality or future. The girl's existence is a trouble to Miyako's village, or to someone who is paying her village, and therefore she will end her, and try not to meet her in her dreams.

The target's bedchamber is guarded, but the man is drowsy, leaning against the wall by a rice-paper lantern, not even bothering to pace. Ryuu flicks a hand at Miyako; she stops obediently in the shadows. He reaches into his belt-pouch and pulls out his canteen. Unscrews the top, and sets it gently on the ground.

He's already shaping hand-seals as he steps out of the shadows.

It takes the guard a moment to realize the danger, and by then it's too late. He draws his sword, opens his mouth. Ryuu murmurs, "_Suiton: Hebi no Dekishi no Jutsu_."

Water rises from the canteen in a thin, glittering stream, wavering for a moment in the air. Miyako sees a flat, wedge-shaped head, tiny malicious eyes, slender dripping fangs. Then the water-snake strikes, faster than a whip, flashing under Ryuu's arm to wind like a noose around the guard's throat and plunge into his open mouth. His eyes bulge; he drops his sword and claws at his throat, at his mouth, but his fingers slip straight through the snake without loosening its coils. He drops to his knees, then his stomach. One foot kicks, and then he lies still.

Ryuu releases the Bird seal, and the snake collapses abruptly into a puddle on the floor. The drowned man doesn't twitch as Ryuu slides the bedroom door open and steps inside. Miyako scoops up his empty canteen and follows.

No windows, no lamps. The only light is a soft golden glow filtering through rice-paper doors from the hallway. Ryuu is a ghost in the darkness, blacker than shadows. When he draws his katana from its sheath between his shoulder-blades the edge doesn't catch a glimmer.

It rises, falls.

Miyako knows that wet thunk as well as she knows her own name. She doesn't flinch, even when Ryuu picks the dripping head up by its long hair, holds it up for a moment to bleed out over the body, then rejoins her with his grisly trophy still hanging from his hand. "Her father's room," he says, barely a whisper.

This time she takes the lead. There are more guards, but they're easily avoided by slipping into the shadows, chakra-crawling on the ceiling. No point or purpose in killing all of them, and every corpse left in their wake is an added risk, another minute shaved off the time before an alarm is raised.

The guards outside the lord's bedroom are a different matter. There are two, stationed on either side of the sliding doors, and they both look alert, awake, aware of the constant danger brooding over a man who has enemies in a world that has ninja. Miyako flattens herself to the ceiling and studies them, upside-down. She'll have to take out both in the same moment, and most of her jutsu are not meant for indoors work.

She can feel Ryuu close behind her, his chakra a cool pressure against hers. He could repeat his drowning snake jutsu, but they have only the water in her canteen—and besides, she thinks stubbornly, this is _her _job to do. Her moment to show him what she's made of.

She tries not to think of why that should matter. Instead she draws a kunai, grips the cloth-bound hilt in her teeth, and crawls along the ceiling to a point perfectly between the two guards. Ryuu hangs back, watching. Miyako adjusts her angle, transfers more gripping chakra to her knees, and sets her hands together in the first seal of the Temporary Paralysis Technique.

One of the guards turns to speak to the other just before Miyako hits the last seal and releases her chakra. The words clot on his tongue. He struggles to turn, to close his mouth, but his muscles are no longer his own. Only the guards' eyes move, agonized, as she drops from the ceiling and lands crouched at their feet.

Her jutsu will last only a few seconds at most. She cuts their throats in two quick slices and refuses to flinch from the blood spatters. They bleed out, still on their feet.

Ryuu drops down behind her, lands softly in a three-point crouch. His other hand cradles the head, wrapped in its own long hair. He nods to her, almost imperceptibly, then straightens and slips past her into the lord of Junpei castle's bedchamber.

Miyako does not follow to watch him place the daughter's severed head on the father's pillow. She does not want to imagine that waking scene, or what trifling or terrible insult might have provoked their client to buy this inhuman revenge. The daughter is dead; if her father's mind is not broken by his morning's waking, his power will be by the documents stolen from and planted in his study. Her team are merely weapons in their client's hands.

This rule, at least, she will follow.

* * *

They regroup with Daisuke and Keiichi in the study and leave the castle the way they came. No one speaks on the journey back to the inn. The sky has already begun to lighten, pearly grey in the east, and in a courtyard somewhere a cockerel crows. Under their roof-tile highway the city's early risers are just beginning to stir.

Behind the women's bathhouse, Ryuu says, "Eastern gate. Noon."

Daisuke and Keiichi disappear without argument. Miyako wonders how much of their obedience is due to the blood drying in spattered sprays across Ryuu's face and flak vest. His sleeve and hand are brown with it. She rubs her own face, and blood flakes away on her fingertips.

Ryuu checks the greying sky again. "You have half an hour before the maids come to clean the bathhouse, maybe. Make it quick."

She does. She even dries the wet floor and buckets with a very minor fire jutsu, afterward, and disguises her wet hair and damp uniform with another henge. Loose hair this time, and a rumpled yukata, as though she's just returning from the toilet. The serving maid she meets in the hall bows politely and never meets her eyes.

Ryuu is already back in their room, damp but well-scrubbed, rubbing absently at his hair with a thin towel as he repacks one-handed. He glances up, then away. "You did well, tonight," he tells his pack.

"I am grateful to have pleased my lord," Miyako murmurs.

That gets his attention again. He looks up sharply. Miyako smiles at him and sinks down on the futon. "My lord's pleasure is my only desire. That this unworthy one might find favor in my lord's eyes—"

He moves so fast her eyes barely register the blur. One moment she's kneeling a futon's length away, and the next she's flat on her back, knocked breathless and out of the henge, with one broad hand pinning her shoulder and the other at her throat. His eyes are the color of burned bone.

"I am not," he breathes, "in the mood for games."

"Good," she says, sudden, savage, because games are a thin substitute for what she really wants, for hard and hot and hurting the way that dead girl in Junpei castle will never have.

That murdered girl.

If she closes her eyes she can still see the smeared spray of blood across his face, like shattered rubies in the lamplight, drying flaked and black. He killed one girl, asleep in her bed, and one guard, drowned in a castle corridor. She cut four throats and never questioned the rightness of it. Did those men have wives waiting for them in warm beds? A favored whore down in the city, planning with her lover to buy her freedom? What makes their lives worth so much less than her mission?

Dangerous thoughts. _A shinobi is a weapon. _Once she begins to question her orders there will never be an end; that way lies both madness and missing-nin. Better to drown herself in breathless urgency, in his mouth on her skin, his heat burning away uncertainty. It's worked before.

She reaches for him. A hand at his waistband, cold fingers on his cheek.

"This isn't a game," she tells him, "and it doesn't have to be you." She's seen the way Keiichi and even Daisuke watch her; neither of them would turn her away. "But I'd like it to be."

His hand tightens on her throat, just shy of painful. Chakra crackles instinctively beneath her skin. Even now, even pinned on her back and at his mercy, she could fight him off; kunoichi learn tricks even jounin never have to.

She doesn't move.

The muscle jumps in the side of his jaw. He jerks his chin up, looking at nothing now, or perhaps at memory; his eyes are as dark as the shadows in her own mind.

"I'm not safe," he says.

_He's bad news,_ Keiichi had warned her, and Miyako had answered, _So am I._

Her fingers slip down his cheek, graze the side of his mouth. She remembers the taste of vodka and strawberries, the sting hidden beneath the sweet.

"I don't care," she says, and then, surprising even herself, "I don't believe you'll hurt me."

She'd thought she wanted him to. But she can see the fear, now, behind the iron control; the tension in his jaw, the tightness in his mouth. His hands on her throat and shoulder are too rigid to tremble.

He's seen the darkness in himself. Used it. And they're not at a bar in Konoha, at a safe remove from the mission, reports filed, clothes changed, a hazy film of alcohol softening the harsh edges of the world. All the edges are raw now, his darkness still only half-leashed, the memory of blood hot on his skin.

She looks for life after she kills, for warmth, for the mindless peace she's found only lost in men's sweat-slicked bodies. She never assumes they'll respect or even remember her in the morning. But she has never wondered if they respect themselves, afterward, either.

She whispers, "Please. Just hold me a little while."

He looks down at her at last. The darkness flickers in his eyes. And then, slowly, he lifts his hand from her throat, drops his other hand from her shoulder. He lowers himself to the futon beside her as carefully as if she's a wild deer in the forest, tensed to flee at any moment. She can hear the blood pounding in her ears; she counts thirteen before he slides an arm under her shoulders, wraps the other over her ribs, and turns her toward him as gently as if she will shatter beneath his touch.

He is so warm, and gradually she begins to warm too.


	2. Chapter 2

This Broken World We Choose

_Note: This fic is set about 30 years before the beginning of _Naruto _canon, about 6 years before the outbreak of the Third Great Ninja War. All characters but four are original, but the setting is derived directly from the Fallen Leaves RPG on Insanejournal. Great thanks to Dark for letting me borrow his characterization of Hatake Sakumo and his wife Kyouko, and to Dark, Nezuko, and Gunmetal for comments and support._

* * *

Chapter Two

They return to Konoha in a rainy twilight, silent and shivering in their sodden uniforms. It might be early evening, or late afternoon; Ryuu thinks they've been on the move at least eight hours, but without the sun it's hard to be sure. His own weariness is no guide. He's been weary, it seems, forever. Or at least since Tousaki Miyako was assigned to a team under his command.

His mission brief, three days ago, gave him the barest summary of her record. Chuunin, twenty-one, talented with fire jutsu but unlikely to manifest control over a second chakra nature and be promoted to jounin. Nothing to indicate she's the type of girl to pick up a stranger in a bar for a standing quickie in an alley, or seduce her team leader on a mission. Or back down from a third seduction, later, and ask merely to be held.

After twenty years as a ninja—genin at eight, jounin at eighteen—Ryuu knows himself. Knows he was a danger in that dawn-bright inn room yesterday, that his iron-forged self-control was brittle, nearly broken. But he hasn't been that man in nearly six years, and never wants to be him again. He never should have let himself go so far: shouldn't even have touched Miyako until he was himself again, until the memory of a girl's blood on his hands faded and he could remember what it meant to be gentle.

Loneliness is no excuse. Neither is telling himself that she asked for it, asked for _him_; she didn't know who she was asking. He hasn't told her his full name and doesn't mean to. Memories are as short as lives in a ninja village, but some rumors linger. Maybe he should tell her himself, warn her off, _scare _her off—

But she doesn't seem the type of girl to be easily frightened. She's got shadows in her eyes, edges of her own; in the alley she wrapped her legs around his hips and bit his lip and told him he didn't have to be gentle.

_It doesn't have to be you_, she told him later. _But I'd like it to be._

Maybe, he thinks, she could deal with dangerous.

He watches her as they trudge through the rain towards Konoha's East Gate. She hasn't spoken to him since they left the inn at Junpei, beyond the brief necessities amongst a team on the move—_I'll gather firewood, Thanks for digging the latrine. _The rain sleeks her long black hair, sheens the delicate curves of cheekbone and jaw. She flicks water out of her eyes with an impatient hand and glowers up at the sky, generous mouth set thin, long lashes beaded with wet. There's a curse itching at the corner of her mouth, but she bites it back, lowers her head again, and slogs on.

The gate-guards are stationed in a little three-sided hut, sheltered from the wind and the rain. They make a production out of checking IDs, even though Ryuu's been through here three times in the last month, even though they seem to know Keiichi and Miyako by sight; they joke about people he doesn't know. He stands apart, waiting.

"Hisagi Saya was lookin' for you," one of the chuunin guards mentions at last, off-handed, as he hands Miyako's dogtags back to her. She stiffens, but drops the steel chain around her neck anyway, tucks the gleaming discs beneath the high collar of her shirt. Her voice is low, steady.

"She say why?"

"Said it was about your dad," the other guard offers.

"Is he dead?"

The guards exchange a quick glance. Ryuu wonders what they read in her tone, in her face. Her shoulders are rigid, spine straight: braced against anticipated grief?

"No," one of the guards says at last.

"Too bad," Miyako says, indifferent as ice, and turns away.

Her eyes meet Ryuu's. Caught watching, he almost lets his drop. But he remembers the blood-warm shame in his cheeks when teammates refused to meet his gaze, the copper taste on his tongue, and he doesn't look down.

"I've got a mission report to write," he says instead. "Coming?"

She smiles like a knife. "I still owe you that drink."

* * *

Bureaucracy comes first; it always does. Ryuu drops the stolen documents off at the Hokage's palace, where they're neatly bagged and labeled and sent off for the next stage in their little document lives. He gets a new sheaf of papers in return: a mission report in triplicate, with blank pages for commentary on the performance of each of his subordinates, a map of the castle they infiltrated, injury and damage reports, and his own analysis of the mission and its execution.

"You've got twenty-four hours," the chuunin at the desk tells him, gimlet-eyed. "After that we send the ANBU after you."

"Is that a promise?" Ryuu asks.

The chuunin's officious scowl slips; he blinks, bewildered. It's Miyako who laughs, low, delighted, as she turns away from the Unassigned Missions board. "Was that a joke? I didn't think you knew the word."

He can't remember the last time he made a woman laugh. Miyako's voice isn't anything like silver bells, but it's warm and bright and genuinely amused, and something in his chest unclenches a little at the sound.

"I know it in three Earth Country dialects, too," he offers.

She holds the door for him, smiling. "How's about we get a corner booth at The Black Dog and work on that report, and you can teach me?"

The rain has driven the evening crowd to fill the bar earlier than usual, noisy and damp, sodden shoulders steaming a little in the heat of too many bodies packed too close. Miyako elbows her way through to the bar fearlessly, poking one tall white-haired man in the ribs when he doesn't clear her path quickly enough. Ryuu recognizes him when he turns: Jiraiya, one of the Sandaime's former students. He's there with a thin black-haired man and a busty blonde girl, the other two members of a team already become famous.

Miyako isn't daunted by early fame. "Thought you were still in Ame," she says, tipping her head back to meet Jiraiya's tattoo-edged eyes. He can't be any older than she is; Ryuu was a chuunin before this boy even entered the Academy. But he's four centimeters taller than Ryuu and five kilos heavier, and something about him sets Ryuu's teeth on edge.

"Hurried back when I heard you were in town, Miyako-chan," he says, with a grin barely short of a leer. Behind him, Shodai's granddaughter rolls her eyes. Jiraiya doesn't notice or doesn't care. "Buy you a drink?"

In a bar this crowded with shinobi, releasing even a flicker of killing intent would be like pouring blood into a shoal of sharks. Ryuu clamps down tight and steps closer, looming behind Miyako's shoulder.

Tsunade and Orochimaru notice him first. The girl's eyes narrow, and her teammate's hand drifts towards the kunai holster on his thigh. Ryuu holds his ground. They're good, maybe better than good; he's heard the stories of what they did in Ame. People are already beginning to call them the Legendary Three, the Sannin. He could take one, with luck, but not all three. At least there's plenty of water here...

"Sorry," Miyako says cheerfully, just as Jiraiya registers Ryuu's scowl. His eyes snap down to her face again, or possibly lower. She tilts her head to look up at him, and Ryuu can hear the smile in her voice. "I've already got a date."

"With Grouchyface there?" Jiraiya's nose crinkles. "Might as well date Orochimaru—at least he's got better hair."

Miyako tosses her own long wet hair over her shoulder, straight and shining. "Never could abide kissing a man prettier than me," she says. Orochimaru looks disturbingly smug. Jiraiya mostly looks disturbed.

"Don't waste your time teasing them," Tsunade advises. "Jiraiya won't get it, and Orochimaru won't care. Have you found a table already?"

"Just got here," Miyako says. She turns slowly, taking in the packed booths, the shinobi packed three deep at the bar and leaning against the walls. On rainy nights half of Konoha goes drinking, it seems. Ryuu's already seen and been seen by a score of jounin he knows. A few even acknowledge him with a tipped chin or a raised glass. Time has passed, and memories fade, but the back of his neck still prickles with unease.

Miyako's fingers brush the back of his hand. Startled, he looks down at her again. Without the smile her face is suddenly older, sculpted by shadows, with a faint line crinkling between her brows. "Somewhere else?" she asks.

"You could join us!" Jiraiya offers, before Ryuu can draw the breath to say _Let's go_, and maybe he will murder the kid after all. This time Jiraiya _does _notice his glare, and returns it with a smirk. "Sakumo and Kyouko already grabbed us a table for six. We can pull up an extra chair."

"Kyouko's got news," Tsunade says to Miyako, in a low, warm voice. "We're celebrating."

"Already?" The thin edge of concern in Miyako's face shatters into delight. "I haven't seen her in months. I should congratulate her—"

And suddenly her fingers are tangling in Ryuu's and she's towing him out of the mob, heading for a table where a lean young man with a thick brush of untidy silver hair is standing eagle-eyed guard over six chairs and a delicate, dark-haired girl. There's a confused moment of laughter and hugs and breathless chatter, while Ryuu tries to offer awkward congratulations to the young man people have already begun to call Konoha's White Fang.

"Five weeks," Hatake Sakumo says, glowing. They've barely spoken before, on teamed missions or in passing in the jounin lounge, but he's clearly so light-headed with pride that he'd brag to the Tsuchikage himself. "I was pretty sure I could smell something different about her all last week, but she just did the test yesterday and got a positive. Due the middle of April. I'm voting for a girl."

"You do know your vote doesn't change anything, don't you?" his young wife asks dryly. "You did your part already. I should just send you out on a mission for the next eight months, get you out from under my feet..."

They smile at each other. Ryuu looks uneasily away and catches sight of Miyako, standing with one hand on the back of a chair, watching. All the laughter has fled her face. She looks tired, a little pained, as if she's inadvertently stretched a half-healed wound.

He barely knows her. Why should he want to take her away from this young couple so cruelly, obviously in love?

Jiraiya pitches noisily between them, dangling sake bottles by their slender necks, and the moment shatters. Tsunade says something, low; Sakumo blushes, and Kyouko laughs. Orochimaru sets a glass of orange juice down at Kyouko's elbow and takes his own seat at the end of the table. Jiraiya tries to sling an arm around Miyako's shoulders. She dodges, lithe as an otter, and comes up to circle Ryuu's wrist with slender fingers and tug him towards a chair.

"Just a little while," she says.

The mission papers crackle stiff in his flak vest, against his shirt. Twenty-three hours, now.

"A little while," he says, and he takes a sake cup when Jiraiya offers it.

* * *

Twenty minutes blur with startling speed into two hours. Miyako buys a round, and then Ryuu does. Jiraiya tries to make a toast, deteriorates quickly into ribaldry, and ends up back in his chair with sake dripping down his face and the print of Tsunade's fist blackening around his eye. Orochimaru tells a long, involved story about someone he met in Wave Country who did something. Somewhat surprisingly, Ryuu finds himself comparing notes with Hatake Kyouko on Water jutsu.

If she's heard his history, she gives no sign of it. She leans back against her husband's shoulder, sipping her orange juice, and asks questions with a voice like silk and a mind like a knife. He scrambles, more than once, for answers. Scrambles more as the alcohol softens the edges of the world. He's distantly aware that he's drinking more than he should on an empty stomach, but plates of yakitori and edamame and chicken karaage arrive at last, with the waitress making hurried apologies for an overworked kitchen, and then even that excuse is gone.

He catches himself, at one point, bending his head to nip a bite of karaage from the chopsticks Miyako is holding up to him. Her high-carved cheekbones are flushed pink and warm; her hair has dried, glossy in the lamplight, loose strands falling soft around her face. She's beautiful, he thinks, a little startled at the observation; he knew that before, when she first leaned up next to him in another bar. Somehow it's different now, relaxed among her friends, with Jiraiya and Tsunade bickering at one side of the table and Kyouko tipping her head back to kiss her husband at the other. The steel-sharp edges are hidden, swathed in warmth and laughter and real smiles. And he doesn't need imagination to embroider his fantasies about what she looks like under her clothes; he has memory, tingling in his hands, coiling heat beneath his belt.

If she were to invite him again, he wouldn't hesitate.

So when she scrapes her chair back and stands at last, he finds himself on his feet only a moment later—wavering a little, as he catches his balance in a world gone suddenly, pleasantly foggy. He stumbles over polite goodbyes, catches Kyouko's amused eye, and flushes a little despite himself. Sakumo grins and gives him a completely indiscreet thumbs-up.

He hasn't let himself get this drunk in years. It was far too easy, with Jiraiya refilling his cup every time he looked away, conversation flowing as smooth and pleasant as the sake. And he still doesn't _feel _dangerous—just loose-limbed, a little tired, still half-aroused. He glances down at Miyako and catches her gazing back, dark-eyed and unafraid.

Maybe she doesn't always have to be the one who asks.

Her hand is small and slim in his; her head barely tops his shoulder. For the first time in years, pushing through the crowd towards the door, his size feels protective, not threatening.

The rain has slackened, but not stopped. They stand together under the dripping eaves and study the wet streets, scrunching together when an already half-drunk shinobi pushes past them into the bar. The air is cool and damp on Ryuu's heat-flushed cheeks, and his head clears a little.

He says, "My apartment's the far side of the village. Near the Hyuuga Compound." Nearly two miles, even by a ninja's direct over-roof route. He looks down at her again, and realizes abruptly that he _hasn't _asked, not the way she did, courage without fear.

He doesn't know if he has that kind of courage.

"I can write the report myself. I'm not just trying to get you to do my work." Even worse. He cuts himself short, on the edge of anger. Even that young idiot Jiraiya could say this, with a laugh and a leer. Why is he even trying?

"My place is closer," Miyako says, watching the rain. Her mouth curls with the edge of a new smile. She glances up at him, and the soft scarlet light of the paper lanterns hanging from the eaves catches in her eyes. "You can decide about the report later."

Her fingers lace through his, and she tugs him out into the rain.

After eight hours' slog, another brief wetting should be less than consequential. He finds himself running with her all the same, head ducked against the spitting rain, following her through streets he barely recognizes in the dark. Three flights of crumbling stairs, and then she has her back to a painted steel door and her hands caught in his jounin vest, and he's kissing the laughter out of her mouth.

Somehow she manages lock and deadbolt. He feels her chakra crackle against his as she disables the protective seals, but he's too distracted to analyze the array. By the time they stumble inside both their vests are already unzipped, and his mission report papers are spotted in wet. She sweeps them out of his vest, tosses them on the kitchen table, and peels the vest down his shoulders. He finds her hair-tie and snaps it, and her hair tumbles long and loose and damp down her back, just as he remembers it in the alley and the inn.

They shed clothes in a staggering striptease, from the tiny kitchen/living area to the even tinier bedroom, half its floor-space eaten up by the wide double bed. Her skin is like ivory in the darkness, silken-soft but striped with scars beneath his fingertips. He is beginning to learn her body: the raised mole just beneath her left breast, the lumpy knot of scar tissue above her collarbone, the right places where lips and tongue can make her back arch and her breath catch and her hands clench in his hair. She gasps his name as she climaxes, and then again when he enters her and brings her once and twice more to the edge and over.

He's lying breathless beside her, spent and still shaking, before he realizes that it's the first time she's ever called him by name.

* * *

He sleeps a little, eventually. When he wakes the rain has stopped and the darkened room is barred with moonlight. Miyako lies warm in his arms, her hair tickling his nose, her hands curled beneath her chin. Her breath is slow and steady, and her eyelids flicker with her dreams.

His arm has gone numb beneath her head. Even in her sleep, she didn't roll away.

Carefully, holding his breath, he eases his arm free and sits up. His pants are somewhere in the shadows on the floor; he doesn't dare risk a light to find them. He's skating gingerly over the clothing-strewn floor, toeing items into a narrow bar of moonlight to look at them, when the bedsprings creak. The skin prickles over his spine. He turns to look.

She's half-upright on one elbow, hair tumbling tangled over her shoulder, eyes still fogged with sleep. "Leaving?"

He finds his briefs, and turns away to pull them on. "Yes."

"You don't have to."

Something closes in his throat. He thinks of trying to explain and doesn't know how. "I have to write the mission report," he says at last.

"At three in the morning?" Her voice is drought-dry. She slides out of bed, skin whispering against the sheets. Bare feet pad over the cold wood floor, then pause. Cloth rustles, and something soft hits him in the back of the knee. "Get dressed," she says. "I'll make coffee."

When he turns, she's already gone, and his pants are on the floor at his feet.

He dresses mechanically, without turning on the light; the warm yellow spill from the kitchen is bright enough. He finds his belt near the bureau, hip-pouches tumbled in a heap; one has opened and spilled shuriken across the floor. Leg-bindings and kunai holster are under the bed. He has to check to be certain they're his.

Shirt and flak vest are still missing. He has a hazy memory of losing them somewhere before he stumbled through the bedroom door. Sword and pack are in the kitchen, he thinks, by a chair. He left them where they fell.

He doesn't know how to face her. It seemed so clear when he woke, like resheathing a sword: he'd never meant to stay. She isn't his to hold. Better to leave in the darkness before dawn than in the harsh light of early morning, when truth is harder to hide.

But there are no sheltering shadows in the kitchen, where Miyako is leaning against battered cupboards with a coffee pot bubbling at her elbow and her arms crossed over her breasts. She wears a man's loose buttoned shirt, white, its hem barely brushing the tops of her thighs. He wonders who left it here, then reminds himself he has no right to care.

"Coffee's nearly ready," she says, cocking a bare heel against the cabinets. Her voice is carefully cool.

He thinks of declining, but he's insulted her enough already. "Thanks," he says, and stoops for his shirt.

The door opens without warning. Ryuu drops the shirt and goes for a kunai.

But the man in the doorway is unarmed, swaying a little, holding himself straight with a hand on the doorframe. "Miya-chan," he says, and takes a step inside. "Saw the light on. You're up late." He smiles at her, and even across the room Ryuu can smell the sharp burn of cheap shouchuu. "Waitin' up for me?"

"I told you before," she says, and her voice is ice and fire. "Get out."

The man's hazy smile holds. He's not so tall as Ryuu, a little heavier, perhaps twenty years older. There's grey in his hair and yellow on his teeth. He's wearing dirty civvies, but he holds himself like a ninja. Chuunin, Ryuu thinks, from the well-worn patterns of his chakra. No threat to _him_, and Miyako can hold her own—

But he doesn't like that smile.

He straightens, dangling the kunai loosely between two fingers, and the man in the doorway isn't drunk enough to ignore him. Dark eyes rake over him from bare feet to tousled hair, lingering on his bandaged left arm. "ANBU?" the intruder demands.

Does he think Ryuu'd admit it if he were? Ryuu's mouth twists. He tugs at the knotted ends of bandaging, drops the whole tangle to his feet. The long gash down his biceps is red and crusted, barely half-healed, lacing over older scars. No scarlet spiral excuses his old mistakes.

"Jounin," he says.

Not even a flicker of caution in that drink-flushed face. "Mighta guessed. She likes 'em rough."

Killing intent rises like a storm from the far side of the kitchen. "Get out," Miyako says. "Now."

The drunk staggers, clutching at the doorframe. But if he's too far gone in the bottle to master and release his own killing intent, there's anger ready just below the surface. "Gettin' full of yourself, girl," he says. "Spread your legs for a jounin, an' suddenly you're too good to talk to your dad? You think you can look down on me, give me orders? You little whore—"

Ryuu moves.

The man's spine slams into the wrought-iron railing of the landing outside before he's quite realized Ryuu is there. This close his breath is foul and fiery with alcohol, his blood-shot eyes wide with fear and fury. He scrabbles at Ryuu's hands, at the forearm shoving hard against his chest, but stills when he feels the kiss of a kunai against his throat.

"She told you to go," Ryuu says, softly.

Her father spits obscenities at him.

Ryuu looks down, over the railing: it's a three-storey drop. No problem at all for a ninja with his wits about him, dangerous for a drunk. He's not sure he cares.

"Over the railing," he says. "Or down the stairs. Your choice."

Another brief struggle to break free. But Ryuu's sober now and he's angry, and he's got youth and strength and leverage all on his side. He shoves Miyako's father back against the railing, hard, and presses the kunai closer. The razor-edge bites. A thin trickle of blood seeps around the edge of the blade.

A man this old will know his name, know the danger in it. But Ryuu has spent six years trying to make that name mean something else, and he won't use it now to warn off a man too drunk and stupid to scare. Not when he hasn't yet told Miyako who he is and what he did.

Instead he leans in, bending Tousaki back over the railing, and murmurs: "I'm still valuable to my village. Are you?"

It's a calculated guess—the dirty civvies instead of a chuunin vest, the alcohol, the anger. But he's seen enough men's eyes widen at the shock of a mortal blow to know this one hit home. It's almost instinctive to follow up on his advantage, to strike again before Tousaki can recover. "The MPs won't even investigate if one old drunk trips down the stairs." Ryuu's good at staging deaths, accidental or otherwise. His spare uniform is still spattered with the blood of the last corpse he arranged. He remembers the blood drying on his face, the weight of the severed head in his hand, and lets the memory darken his voice. "It'll be easy. I might even enjoy it."

Behind him, Miyako says coldly, "I don't want even his corpse outside my door."

Ryuu's not fool enough to look round, even when Tousaki's gaze darts over his shoulder. But he eases off a little, enough to let Tousaki breathe again. Blood slicks the edge of his kunai and the side of Tousaki's neck.

"I'll know," he says, "if you come round again."

Tousaki shoves him away. "Enjoy her," he spits. "Half the village already has." He swipes at his bloody neck, swears viciously, and staggers for the stairs.

Ryuu's hand clenches around the longing to plant the kunai in his spine. He holsters it instead, harder than he should; he'll have to check the others for nicks later, and clean them all. A familiar task, mindless, numbing. No need at all to think or remember.

But peace doesn't come yet, and his thoughts don't slow.

"He must have been discharged," he says, turning. "He wasn't wearing dogtags." Ryuu knows better than anyone how hard it is to be discharged from Konoha's shinobi service, how bad your mistakes must be; even in the blackest times no one ever threatened it to him.

"Drunk on duty," Miyako says, in a frozen voice. "He's been warned before."

She drops his shirt and vest and a handful of crumpled papers at his feet.

"Thanks," she says. "I won't look for you again."

The door closes. He hears the click of a lock, the harder snick of the deadbolt. Chakra flares, reigniting protective seals. For a moment she is silhouetted black against the yellow glow of the curtained kitchen window: straight-backed, strong-shouldered, graceful head still held high. Rigid as glass, refusing to let herself shatter.

The light flicks off, leaving them both in darkness.

* * *

His pack and sword and sandals are still somewhere in her kitchen, hidden behind a chair. He makes his way home without them, catching himself with chakra when his bare feet skid on wet roof tiles. The sky is beginning to lighten, grey in the east. He thinks of running over rooftops at dawn with Miyako behind him, two days ago, and wonders what he did wrong.

Should he have tried to leave in the first place? He can't see that things would be any better if Tousaki had caught them in bed, instead of half-dressed and out of it; but maybe it would have made a difference to her. Maybe if he hadn't tried to slip away like a man leaving a prostitute, leaving guilt instead of money on the bedside table...

Her father's ugly words ring in his head. _Little whore. Half the village._

How often has Tousaki used those knives against her?

He could have killed Tousaki. Nearly did. Who'd notice that smear on a record already blackened? He's still valuable to his village, even now—_especially_ now—and Tousaki's out on a dishonorable discharge or worse. The MPs might not bother to investigate, even if he stood over Tousaki's corpse with blood on his hands. _He startled me_, he could say. _Reflex_. And they'd write _Accident_ on their papers, or maybe _Suicide-by-jounin_, and drag the corpse off, and Konoha wouldn't care.

Would Miyako?

There was no dullness to the edge of her killing intent. But you can kill without caring, or broadcast killing intent without truly desiring death. He's done both too many times to recall. He tries to remember the look on her face, but all he can see is the way she sat up in bed, her hair tangled with shadows, dark eyes half-lidded and sleepy-sated, in the moment before he left her.

His own apartment is dark and cold. He dries his wet feet on the mat just inside the door and drops his vest on the armor-stand. Mission report on the kitchen table, kunai holster and shuriken pouch on top of the weapons chest, clothes in the basket in his bedroom. He turns the light on only when he gets to the bathroom, and blinks painfully in the sudden glare.

The mirror shows him a man who hates himself.

He turns the shower up as hot as it will go and stands for a long time under the steaming spray, one hand braced flat against the tiled wall. For a little while he lets himself remember the bathhouse in Junpei, clean striped yukatas, Miyako's elaborate game of pretend. The paleness of her skin, the softness of it, the smell and taste of her, the perfection of her movement under and around him. The demure bride's smile, and the teasing chuunin's.

He wanted her from the moment she bought him a fruity pink drink with an umbrella on a stick. Wants her still, remembering, even though he's already had her tonight, even though he'll never have her again. _I won't look for you_, she said, and he could hear how she meant it.

_Damn _Tousaki. If he hadn't come Ryuu might have recovered from his misstep, might have sat down for coffee, might have finished the report there at Miyako's kitchen table and then gone back to bed with her until morning came. Maybe in the clear light of day he'd have been able to talk to her at last. Maybe she would have forgiven him his past, teased away his fears, let him kiss her scars. Maybe someday he'd have been where Hatake Sakumo is now, honored, respected, with Miyako leaning back against his shoulder and smiling that soft, secret smile as she cradled the child growing in her womb.

The water runs cold.

He towels off roughly and digs through his closet until he finds an old yukata, faded and threadbare. His kiseru pipe is in his pack, but he has a spare. The box of hair-fine tobacco is on the table by his bed. He opens his bedroom window and sits on the ledge, above the window-box where neglected pansies are slowly dying.

Konoha never truly sleeps, not with the mission-desk and the hospital and any number of restaurants and bars open twenty-four hours a day. Now it is almost dawn, and the rest of the drowsing village has begun to wake. Two chuunin race down the street below his window, shouldering into each other at the turns. A street-sweeper follows them, slow and intent on the soft susurration of his broom on pavement. Across the street Nakamura-san, the baker, takes down the shutters from his windows and begins hauling out chairs and tables to create his little sidewalk cafe.

Ryuu could have stayed, and asked Miyako to have breakfast with him, and spun out a whole idyllic future as fragile and beautiful as soap-bubbles in sunlight. But Tousaki would still have come. Still attacked Miyako with every word, driving her into a frozen shell, stealing the warmth and laughter from her eyes.

_Is he dead? _she'd asked the guards at the gate.

_Too bad._

Ryuu barely remembers his own father. An enormous hand ruffling his hair, a rumbling voice, a name carved at the very top of the Heroes' Stone, near the Shodai's. When he was very small he begged his mother for stories of the father who died a hero; he practiced with his father's sword in the garden and imagined he could feel those big hands guiding his. He grew up lonely, then resentful, then glad that his father did not live to see the shame Ryuu brought upon their family name. In the bad years, when he was pulling himself out of the blackness, Ryuu sometimes prayed to him.

He suspects Miyako might have traded his dead father for her living one.

_Little whore,_ Tousaki said. _She likes 'em rough._

If he is right, he should have killed Tousaki when he had the chance. Should kill him _now_, to make up for no one doing it years ago. Would Miyako thank him? Or would she look at him with cold, indifferent eyes, and ask him if he believed usurping her rightful revenge was a sure path back to her bed? Whether he thought saving her, years too late, would be fitting atonement for his own sins, for the girl he didn't save?

His pipe has burnt out. He tips the ashes into the window-box and stares dully down at the little grey heap.

"You're no hero, Kondo Ryuu," he whispers.

The rising dawn breeze catches the ashes, and scatters them away.


End file.
